I Do Not Hope to Turn Again
by Ariel-chan
Summary: Won second place in a fiction contest. Based on the lyrics to Caught in the Rain. GEN


Another short fiction written for a contest at HogwartsElite on Livejournal. We were given the lyrics to a song called "Caught in the Rain" and told to write a fic inspired by those lyrics. 

Title: I Do Not Hope to Turn Again

Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy GEN

Words: 890

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The old man had been trying to find the library for the last forty-five minutes at least. He moved so very slowly these days, even with the cane, and the people swirling around him rapidly in such bright colors conspired with his failing eyesight to confuse him even further. He'd gotten so used to his eyes' inability to focus that he didn't notice the encroaching darkness or the dwindling of the weekend Hogsmeade crowd until the first cold drop of water had slipped down to the tips of his snow-white hair and fallen icy on his cheek, as if in warning.

It wasn't much of a warning, at that. He limped, cane cracking on the cobblestones with every step, at something almost like normal walking pace as he hurried to the nearest overhang roof of a pavillion as the sky crackled and rumbled open behind him, spilling its burden onto the pavement. He leaned against a pillar and propped his unadorned black cane beside him, breathing heavily and clutching the front of his robe.

Eyes the same color as the weeping clouds overhead stared outside at the emptied streets. Hogsmeade had grown a great deal since he had last been there, at the end of the war, but he recognized a few of the buildings. He had come very close to the library, and seemed to be somewhere near the center of the town in an area protected from the encroaching pavement and humanity by a thin line of curling rod-iron fence. It was probably the tiniest park he'd ever seen, and would undoubtedly be swallowed completely by progress within twenty years.

As he turned to see the buildings around his shelter better, his cane was knocked askew and clattered to the floor, where it rolled unhindered until a metal pole halted its path. The rod in question was parallel to two others, which together with a fourth formed a square around the centerpiece of the old man's little shelter. On top of the first pole was a sign warning visitors not to pass the rope. From the second pole a rope dangled uselessly to coil around its base on the floor. Filthy and rubbed smooth by many hands, the rope might once have been red velvet.

As the old man stared up at the treasure this rope had protected, his back straightened itself up instinctively, his shoulders rolling back in their sockets for the first time in ages as one corner of the thin-lipped mouth twisted up ever so slightly in a smirk that felt to its owner both unusual and familiar. He bent and retrieved his cane from the floor, then leaned his right side on it heavily, locking eyes with those of the pale granite statue before him.

"Hello, Potter," he spoke, once smooth, higher voice rough with disuse and age. "Fancy meeting you here."

Draco Malfoy, newly paroled former Death Eater, shivered at the chill that blew into the pavillion as he examined his former rival. Harry Potter was someone he had known and, in a manner, studied for several years, and he found a great multitude of things wrong with it. Some were little things, like the way his right eyebrow tilted or how the corners of his mouth should turn very slightly downward, even when he was smiling. Then there were bigger things, like the fact that Potter's nose, while not classically handsome, was certainly never missing a chunk from the tip, he had almost definitely not posessed a curly black mustache at seventeen, and he had not, in life, worn declarations of others' unending love scratched into his chest.

It had only been sixty years since Harry Potter's showdown with the Dark Lord Voldemort, whose name was no longer feared. In such a short span, a span which apparently could be survived entirely by one lonely man in a tiny cell, despite all predictions to the contray, already Potter had been forgotten. Already teenagers drew on his image, birds shat on his stone shoulders, and no one even bothered to keep up the appearance that mattered.

"You know, Potter," Draco muttered to himself. "In a way, I'm a bigger celebrity than you now. We're both in the books, but who survived? Me. Who still made the newspapers on release? Me. Nearly eighty years old and they still consider me so dangerous I'm not allowed a wand. Who's famous now, Potty? Who's more important to the wizarding world?"

He stood in silence, staring at the statue as though waiting for a reply to reach him. Finally, when the rain began to patter to a halt and he heard the murmur of conversation in the street, the shriek of children discovering the sun in puddles, he nodded and bent to string the rope back up between the two guardian pillars.

The old man stepped back, caressing the scarred, broken top of his cane in a familiar pattern, touching one fingertip slowly to trace the initials printed along the side. He straightened one last time, holding his weight evenly on both legs as he made a sweeping gesture with his cane that encompassed the whole area before him. "Scourgify. Reparo."

His shoulders fell forward again, his back bent, and he leaned heavily onto his cane and limped out the way he had come, toward the library.


End file.
